January 20, 2009

The Chief Justice in fact screwed up the oath. The Constitution requires:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Roberts left out the word "faithfully." (He also said "President to the United States.") Obama saw the mistake and stopped himself to give Roberts a chance to fix it. Roberts redid the line, remembering to throw in "faithfully," but putting it in the wrong place — after "President of the United States" — and, this time, Obama went along with the wording. Close enough, I guess he figured. I wonder what Barack Obama was thinking. Maybe: Some textualist you turned out to be!

Let no one think Barack Obama made the mistake.

ADDED: I've relistened. Roberts puts "faithfully" after "President of the United States" the first time as well as the second. He did not leave it out.

OK, Chief Justice Roberts gets most of the blame for this, but President - President - Obama isn't totally off the hook - he jumped the gun on the first sentence, "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear ...," and it was kind of downhill after that.

commenter said..."../like no one has ever botched up wedding vows, either."

Well, yeah, but is just a tad more important...doncha thik?

No Michael, I don't think his oath is more important than the one I gave my wife. Which is why I don't want it diluted any more by allowing same sex marriages, brother sister marriages, multiple wives marriages, animal/people marriages. Easy, thoughtless divorce has been bad enough.

My wedding vows were even more important than the oath taken by Obama: He is President at noon with or without the oath. But while the leader of the nation, he is still one citizen. The backbone and existence of this country is families. Married families. A nation of singles will not survive long term.

No, Michael. "80% fo the American People" reported in polls that they "did not approve" of his performance.

That includes people who thought he was "not Republican enough" as well as the opposite.

(When Obama's poll numbers drop as soon as he starts making real decisions, will the polls matter as much?

Or will they suddenly become, as they've always been, an almost-useless reflection of what people saw on TV last night combined with a ludicrous model of Presidental influence that holds the President responsible for every fluctuation of the world economy?)

Back on the original post, however, I cannot wait for four years of idiots telling me "Obama isn't really President because the oath wasn't recited Perfectly".

Okay, don't anyone take this as an attack on yourself, or your post. Or Professor Althouse's post. I'm not ripping that or what anyone else has said here, I'm merely stating what's on my mind:

I could care less if the Oath of Office was f***'d up. I could really care less. The oath is not what's important; it's the conduct of the officeholder throughout his time in office. If they accidentally leave out entire lines, so what? It doesn't matter.

Too many times, we all take the media's cue and obsess over minute items. What truly matters is who won the election and how that winner performs. All the trappings of office are important for tradition and continuity, and the oath itself is a statement of fidelity and duty, so don't think I'm denigrating the oath. I'm not. It's very important. It deserves great respect. But rather, I'm pointing out that the oath can be completely borked all to hell and it won't change the fact that Obama's the President, that he's the first African-American elected to this office, and that he's got a bunch of issues to deal with for the next 4 years.

All right. The oath was screwed up. Amusing footnote in history noted. Someone let me know when the news media and the rest of the nation is ready to return to topics of substance. That's what matters, regardless of who's President.

Well, you're assuming he botched it. But it wasn't Roberts' big day that this made a mess of. If you could listen in to Roberts' thoughts as he sat back down, I bet it went like this: "That'll teach you to vote against me, you snotty little upstart."

Oh for Heaven's sake. They were nervous, probably freezing their buns off. It's no big deal. This intense focusing on irrelevant minutia instead of the big picture is what is wrong with the media and partisan fanatics an all sides.

I want to focus on what is really important. Like...what is Michelle going to wear to the inaugural ball? If nothing else, I really like her clothing style.

Relax. Roberts screwed it up. Not Obama. Obama paused to make Roberts repeat it. All is good. Move on."

I know it was the Chief Justice who screwed it up. Doesn't change anything; my point still stands. It's nothing more than an amusing anecdote for historians ("Hey, did'ja know the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court dorked up the Oath of Office for the first African American President?"). Sort of a fun, Trivial Pursuit factoid to store away, nothing more. Which is my whole point.

Host With No Braqins: "No Michael, I don't think his oath is more important than the one I gave my wife. Which is why I don't want it diluted any more by allowing same sex marriages, brother sister marriages, multiple wives marriages, animal/people marriages. Easy, thoughtless divorce has been bad enough."

I'm repeating part of another comment since it belongs here even more:

This fabulous comment from the influential and clever lefty blog Washington Monthly gets right to the core meaning of what happened:

I think Justice Roberts fucking up the oath is a perfect symbol of the transfer of power. Roberts deciding to "wing-it W-style" didn't use notes and ended up fucking up a very historic event. Obama, in contrast, was left trying to fix the half cocked mess. What a wonderful symbol for what Bush is handing off and the different approaches of the two administrations.Posted by: palinoscopy on January 20, 2009 at 1:29 PM

How can anyone say Obama didn't screw up the oath? I just watched Slick Willy doing his oath, and then watched Obama doing his for a second time. Obama screws up the first bit; Roberts screws up the second bit. Two knuckleheads.

Roberts and Obama were looking at each other thinking: "One of us just screwed up. Which one?"

It looked to me like Obama was trying to help Roberts out, but it's hard to know for sure.

It all began to go downhill when Obama started to repeat before Roberts was done with reading the first part of the oath. But I liked that: Obama rarin' to go. That's how his speech sounded--like a guy who can't wait to take on the challenges.

Roberts got it wrong from the beginning, calling Obama “Senator”, when he was already president (since noon, according to the constitution). Roberts should’ve at least said “president elect” if he was unfamiliar with the constitution ;-)

I think Justice Roberts fucking up the oath is a perfect symbol of the transfer of power. Roberts deciding to "wing-it W-style" didn't use notes and ended up fucking up a very historic event. Obama, in contrast, was left trying to fix the half cocked mess. What a wonderful symbol for what Bush is handing off and the different approaches of the two administrations.

You can look at it that way. Or you can look at it in Clintonian-Bush terms. In the rush to grab power, an untested but popular man jumped the gun, leaving an unpopular man to clean up his mess, which he did clumsily.

Alex: "David - fuck you and Obama and all you Democrats. I hope Obama fails more horribly then any President in history!"

Well said, Alex. Let's see. Buchanan's failures made the Civil War pretty much inevitable. Would it please you if Obama could top that? I'm sure the nation would recover from whatever is worse than the Civil War in a century or two.

Good to see from you the evidence of you that total churlishness is not confined to the Left.

Like Buddwing and Victoria said: Obama first threw Roberts off stride by repeating "I, Barack Hussein Obama" without waiting for Roberts to say "do solemnly swear." They stepped on their toes like bad dance partners from then on.

Speaking of wedding vows, one of my (long since ex) brothers-in-law, who had tied on quite a good one on wedding eve, and who was Mexican and hence not a native English speaker, botched his vows to my sister in such a way that we all agreed afterwards that he had married himself.

I thought the moment when Obama became president (and it literally was) was the wordless moment about 12:01 when Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman et.al. were playing and he was turning and looking at them and smiling. They could have thrown the rest of it out. That was it. Enough words!

my vows were in German. I did not have to repeat anything. I only had to say

"Ich will"

Now some native germanic linguist might explain to me the differences in modal verbs in the german language. I know ick will(i was in Berlin, hence ick )does not translate into the emphatic I DO.

It means something like i will it to be, I guess. Though, more often it means i really want to. Other than that i did not have to say anything. I cannot even tell you what my vows were. IN my civil service, I can't even remember speaking. I just signed my name on the dotted line where the public servant had pointed.

So the words meant really nothing to me. There was more thought and emotion that meant the world to me. I did not underswtand fully the language but i understood what was in my heart, what i was getting into. I kept those vows until I was asked to sign a paper that it was all over. Just as i kept my word to the Catholic church that i would raise my kids Catholic.

mcg said..."Obama was officially President at noon, oath or no oath, according to the 20th Amendment."

I'm not sure that you're right. In one respect I'm sure you're wrong: the Twentieth Amendment says nothing about when a President's term begins, it says when it ends. I would think that leaves intact Article 2's requirement that "[b]efore he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the ... oath [of office]," and that if the incoming President does not take the oath of office before noon on the twentieth, and the incoming vice-President has, the incoming vice-President will "act as President until a President shall have qualified." I realize that this suggests the horrifying prospect that Joe Biden was, for a few minutes, the acting President, but that seems the most faithful reading.

Volkoh: ". . .the flubbed oath at today's inaugural teaches one important lesson: The answer to the question, "How many former editors of the Harvard Law Review does it take to administer the Presidential oath properly?" is "More than two."

James - crap. You're right. My bad; that's what going by memory gets me. Still, that notwithstanding, I would argue that the oath of office is a prerequisite to the President exercising power, while conceding that's an arguable point.

I think the entire thing started because of the full name being used. There was so much about the Hussein name that now with the oath and having to say the full name, I think Obama jumped in on Roberts to try and get that out of the way. This threw Roberts off which is easy to do when you have to go back and add the part that should have been included before Obama spoke. This is a Hussein moment which Obama is sensitive to having out there after the all the hubbub during the race.